It may be the duality into which the human being is split, suspended between self-preservation and self-transgression, that makes us wander with undiminished fascination in the maze of our own unpredictable possibilities. With literature as Ariadne's thread, human beings try to keep track of their self-exploration, always on the verge of losing themselves between their alternatives.

The notion of final or complete versions assumed by virtually all modern editors of Shakespeare is inconsistent with everything we know not only about Renaissance theatrical practice, but the way writers in fact work. Poets are always rewriting, and there is no reason to think that many of the confusions in Shakespeare's texts don't involve second thoughts, or amalgams of quite separate versions of a play. […] I have argued that most literature in the period, and virtually all theatrical literature, must be seen as basically collaborative in nature, and I have said that Shakespeare can be distinguished from most other playwrights only because he was in on more parts of collaboration.